Or Fry's. Used to love going there.

Yes! My favorite was always the one in Burbank. It was one of the ones with a theme, and in this case it was "Alien invasions of the '50s." And not just on the inside, it had a flying saucer crashed into the wall over the main entrance and the snack shop was set up as a drive-in movie theater complete with classic cars rebuilt into tables and seating. Somebody put way too much thought into that place.

My point is that even though you can access your account from your desktop, there are some things you just can't do from the website. There are times that the only way you can do what's needed is either on your phone app or at an ATM, and getting a big check deposited so that your rent check doesn't bounce is probably the most urgent one.

If I lose my bank card, I can go to my desktop computer to manage my account.

Can you use your desktop computer to withdraw cash from your account or deposit a check? Even if you have a scanner, I don't think that the bank's website is capable of that.

I live in southeastern Colorado. Here, Halloween is observed in the late afternoon, after school if it's on a school day and only in the business district. All of the businesses give out candy, and nobody has to worry about kids being out after dark.

Thank you, that was very interesting, and looking up Duty Solicitor in Wikipedia filled out the explanation, including some limitations and exceptions that weren't explained but seemed fairly reasonable. I can see why this doesn't appear in the various mystery programs: it would get in the way of the protagonist's solving the case and that Just Wouldn't Do.

And here in the USA, you have the right to an attorney, and if you can't afford one, one will be provided at government expense. Judging only by what I've seen on various TV programs produced in England, you don't have that right in Blighty. Do you have it in Germany? I'm not trying to put you down, I'm just looking for information here.

Simply stating: We Do Not Accept DOCx or XLSx formats, forces compliance. Since MS can produce ODF (allegedly), that's how you get compliance.

There's always going to be a few people who won't do it, mostly because they're afraid to upset some important customer. How you get around that isn't obvious. However, you can start by making it a requirement that anything that comes in that's in an MS format is sent back with some boilerplate added telling the sender why it's rejected and a list of acceptable formats. Making that automatic, so that the chicken droids can't ignore the policy may be all you need.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of the complaints are from ai bots and not real people.

There's nothing wrong with having a community were AI content is prohibited. In the future, such areas will probably be significantly more valuable anyway.

Some social media site is going to restrict all AI and find that many people would prefer such a community.

This doesn't mean you can't find AI slop online - there's tons of places. Why not have a few that are more selective?

Back when I was in Boot Camp (USN) we were given gas masks one afternoon and herded into a sealed chamber to see for ourselves that they work. Once we'd had time to try them out, we were ordered to remove them, and find out for ourselves what a low-concentration of teal gas was like, followed by having us exit the chamber at double-time to help clear it out of our eyes. Some things you can try out for yourself, others are too hard hitting for that.

Yes I was in the Navy. If the helmsman and the duty office stick the ship on a sandbar the Captain still gets the blame.

And now you know why the Captain spends so much time on the bridge at sea. BTW, every time the Captain comes on the Bridge or leaves it is logged in case it later becomes important. (I was in the Navy too.)

Always been a big fan of the Cringe and met him several times. Always an interesting character. His book, "Accidental Empires" is a must read for anybody wanting to understand how we got to where we are today. He will be missed.

Yeah the cops need to take this one seriously.

You're making a common mistake here: the cops don't have any authority to prosecute criminals or to decide how, or even if the perps get punished. That's up to the court system and to what the local laws say. Yes, I agree that the perps here need to be punished, but let's be realistic about who gets to do it.

Why do the Islamists have so much trouble assimilating?

What makes you think that they want to assimilate? From how they act, many of them want to take over the countries they move to and impose Sharia Law on them.

If these were highly remote locations and getting a human to them in time to fix a problem was going to be a challenge, then maybe remote controllability would be important. But this is a damn supermarket; there's going to be somewhere there or nearby constantly. Dear Lord.

There's no reason that there can't be a thermometer and controls built in, and only accessible from the back. Add on a clipboard with pages printed with lines for date, time, temperature, initials and you have a way to keep track of the temperature without outside access. Add on controls to adjust things and you've got everything you need.

Most computer/tech hardware at least can have a second life after it's fulfilled its primary purpose.

The exception to that is Apple.

You can routinely find their iPads but if they aren't "unregistered" from whoever had the main account, they're utterly useless.

It doesn't make sense to buy products from a company that locks down its hardware like that. I can understand that for a phone, but not some old tablet.